The importance of images when pitching to media

My name is Monica Rosenfeld, and I’m the founder of WordStorm PR. I’ve been producing short videos to show you exactly what you need to get ready before pitching your idea to a journalist. I started off with how to structure a press release, then moved on to how to write a pitch e-mail, and today’s video is going to be all about images.

It’s essential to get professional high quality images ready before you pitch to a journalist. I would go so far as to say it’s compulsory to spend some money on a professional photographer as they know their work and the results will get you a great result. I can’ tell you the number of times that clients have said to me sure, I’ll get my partner to take some photos tonight on their iPhone and the next day they send me images with an arm cut off or just really low quality composition. The media is a visual medium, and if you can show the journalists a visual representation of the pitch you have a much better chance of getting cut through.

So clients often ask me, what sort of images should I get taken? What I would suggest is get your good standard head shots and head to waist shots but then really try and express the personality of your brand through the image. If you sell a product, get your target audience to be using your product in the image and if you’re in the service space industry you can express the personality of your brand by really thinking about the background, the location and even the expression on your face. When you pitch your story idea to the journalist you should always include a small image in the body of the email and also attach a few low res images to the e-mail. Then at the bottom of your pitch email you can let the journalists know that high resolution images are available on request. Whatever you do, don’t attach a whole range of high res images because it’s going to block up their inbox and they will not like that.

Media outlets often take their own images but even if they end up doing this it’s still important in the pitch to show them a visual representation of your story so that you get across the line and get their photographer to come to you if that’s what they want to do.

So think hard about the images, get a professional photographer to help you and enjoy the process. See you next week.